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Khaled Belkacemi

Khaled Belkacemi was a full professor in the department of Soil Sciences and Food Engineering at Université Laval, Quebec. He obtained his MSc and Ph.D in chemical engineering from the Université de Sherbrooke in 1986 and 1990, respectively and his B.Sc. in Chemical engineering from Polytechnic School of Algiers (Algéria) in 1983. Research efforts in Dr. Belkacemi’s laboratory were directed to Agri-food Engineering, with particular emphasis around the improvement of technologies of existing processing and/or the development of new technologies. These technologies focus in improving nutritional qualities and techno-functionality of fats & oils and other food compounds such as lactose, and the biomass upgrading and other by-products into high value-added products involving the use of nanotechnology and nanoscience and heterogeneous catalysis dedicated to food transformations and nutraceuticals.

Charles Cozewith

Dr. Charles Cozewith obtained his BSc (1959), MSc (1961), and PhD (1965) degrees in Chemical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. His PhD thesis, under Professor Kun Li, was on the kinetics of the aluminum-chlorine reaction. After obtaining his MS degree, Dr. Cozewith worked for the Gulf Research and Development Company for 2 years developing catalyst and process technology for oxidation of aromatics before returning to school to obtain a PhD. In 1965, Cozewith joined the Elastomers Research Division of the Exxon Chemical Company to work in the area of Ziegler-Natta catalyzed polymerization of olefins. During his career in Elastomers Research, he carried out a wide range of research projects in polyolefin process and product development, especially for ethylene-propylene elastomers, in positions of increasing responsibility. He was an industry-recognized expert in the area of polyolefin reaction engineering, and is known for his work on copolymerization and reactor modeling. In 1997, Cozewith was promoted to Chief Engineer for Polymer Processes, the highest technical position in ExxonMobil Chemical, and led a group responsible for new developments in polymer reaction engineering for all of ExxonMobil’s polymer businesses. He retired in Jan. 2000, after an Exxon career of more than 34 years.

Cozewith has authored or co-authored twenty publications on the subjects of reactor modeling, polymer thermodynamics, polymer structure design, and mixing. He has also given numerous invited lectures and conference presentations. He co-chaired the first meeting on polymer reaction engineering sponsored by the Engineering Foundation, and has also co-chaired symposia on this topic at AIChE meetings. Dr. Cozewith has been granted 61 US patents for his inventions in the fields of polyolefin catalysis, processes and products. In 1997 he was a recipient of the Goodyear Corporate Inventor Award.

Archie Hamielec

Life is timing. Hamielec’s family caught the last boat that left Poland for Canada in the spring of 1939 just before the war started. Archie was only four years old. He grew up in Toronto Cabbage Town and received his Bachelor degree in 1957, Master’s in 1958 and PhD in 1961, all from UofT Chemical Engineering. He joined McMaster University in 1963 after spending two years in CIL.

Archie was trained in fluid mechanics and was recruited by McMaster to teach Transport Phenomena. His early research was about what’s going on inside falling rain drops. Today, Archie is best known as one of the founding fathers in Polymer Reaction Engineering. He became interested in polymers and realized he could be the first chemical engineer in Canada working on polymers. He liked to study reactor engineering and believed the reactor must have some effect on polymer properties. Archie bought a gel permeation chromatograph in 1964 and became the first professor in the world who owned GPC equipment.

Archie has great affection for research. He has published over 300 refereed journal papers. Many of his works have become classics in the field. Archie is a generalist and worked in many different areas from synthesis and characterization, to kinetics and reactor engineering, to modeling, to applications. Archie also enjoyed giving industrial short courses. Many R&D people in almost all the major polymer companies worldwide have attended his courses. In 1982, together with Terry Hoffman and John MacGregor, Archie founded the McMaster Institute for Polymer Production Technology (MIPPT) and became the founding director. The Institute attracted a large number of industrial projects and collected considerable funds to expand polymer research from chemical engineering to other departments at McMaster. Archie took an early retirement in 1993. He became interested in legal work as an expert witness. In one case, he was challenged by a lawyer about his expertise in adhesives because he did not mention the word in his papers. Archie replied that Einstein never wrote an article on how to make an atomic bomb but was well known as the father of the bomb.

Archie received much recognition for his superstar research performance. He received CSChE’s ERCO Award in 1974, CIC Protection Coatings Award in 1978, NSERC Industrial Chair in Polymer Production Technology in 1986, CIC-Dunlop Award in Macromolecular Science and Engineering in 1987, R.S. Jane Award in 1994, Honorary Doctoral Degree from Waterloo in 1998 and McMaster in 2015. He was elected as a Fellow of Royal Society of Canada (FRSC) in 1987. However, in Archie’s opinion, his highest award was the well being of his former graduate students. Over 40 years, he supervised and co-supervised 35 Ph.D., 40 Masters, and numerous postdoctoral fellows. Fifteen Ph.D. students have become professors and developed strong polymer research programs in their respective universities.

Archie is not only a star scientist but also a superb businessman. His vision helped Nalco get into the baby diaper business and helped SC Johnson develop an emulsion polymerization process. Archie believes the three most important things in one’s life are: health, wealth, and family, in which he is not only a theoretician but also a practitioner of accomplishment.

Eddy Isaacs

Eddy Isaacs is the former CEO of Alberta Innovates – Energy & Environment Solutions and is currently the President of Eddy Isaacs Inc. and a Strategic Advisor to the University of Alberta, Faculty of Engineering. He has spent his career promoting innovation in energy and environment across Canada and in forging partnerships between industry, government and academia. In 2014, he received the ASTECH Foundation’s award for his outstanding contribution to the Alberta science and technology community.

Eddy has served as co-Chair of the Energy Technology Working Group of the Canadian Council of Energy Ministers. He is regularly called upon to provide expert opinion and insight into Alberta’s future in energy and environment. HE holds a PhD from the University of Alberta and a BSc from McGill University. He has over 80 publications and 6 patents in the energy field. He is currently the President-elect of the Canadian Academy of Engineering. He also serves as a Board Member of: the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Council of Canadian Academies; the Scientific Advisory Committee for the NRG-COSIA X-Prize; and the External Advisors’ Panel of the Auditor General of Alberta.

Honouree: Honourary Symposium in Recognition of Eddy Isaacs

Jacob Masliyah

Dr. Jacob Masliyah received his BSc (Chemical Engineering) in 1964 from the University College London, his MSc from the University of New Brunswick while working under the supervision of Dr. Frank Steward and a PhD in 1970 under the supervision of Dr. Norman Epstein from the University of British Columbia. He has been a professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Alberta since 1977. In recognition of his outstanding achievements and distinction in scholarly research, teaching and service to the community, Dr. Masliyah was appointed as a Distinguished University Professor in 2000.

Over the course of his forty year career, Dr. Masliyah’s research has spanned a wide range of topics, ranging from fluid mechanics to fluid-particle dynamics and more recently his research primarily focuses in the area of colloidal and interfacial phenomena as applied to bitumen extraction from oil sands. In part, Dr. Masliyah credits his success in his field to the very active collaboration and participation with academic and industrial researchers. With the assistance of NSERC and industrial partners, Dr. Masliyah established a first ¬rate laboratory in the areas of colloidal and interfacial science which was used successfully to understand the basic processes governing bitumen recovery from oil sands. In 1996, with collaboration with Syncrude Canada Ltd., Dr. Masliyah helped establish the NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Oil Sands Engineering, the first of its kind. Subsequently, the Industrial Chair was expanded to include all the major oil sands surface mining operators. In 1999, together with Dr. Jan Czarnecki of Syncrude, Dr. Masliyah received the NSERC University-Industry Synergy R & D Partnerships Award for best practices in university-industry collaboration. In 2008, the industrial chair was further expanded under the leadership of Dr. Zhenghe Xu.

Dr. Masliyah is author and co-author of two books in the area of electrokinetic and colloid transport phenomena and he co-authored two handbooks on oil sands with Drs. Jan Czarnecki and Zhenghe Xu. He published over 350 refereed publications. Dr. Masliyah is also the recipient of many awards, namely: The Century of Achievement Award for significant contributions to the field of chemical engineering and the R.S. Jane Memorial Lecture Award from the Canadian Society of Chemical Engineering. He is the first Canadian who simultaneously held an NSERC Industrial Research Chair and a Canada Senior Research Chair.

From the University of Alberta, Dr. Masliyah received the Gordin Kaplan Award in research excellence, the Rutherford Undergraduate Teaching Award and the University Cup. In 2013, Dr. Masliyah was the recipient of Honorary Degree in Science. On the provincial level, he received in 2005 the APEGA Frank Spragins Technical Award and the Alberta Centennial medal. In 2015, he was named member of the Alberta Order of Excellence. He is also a Fellow of the Canadian Society of Chemical Engineering, the Canadian Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society of Canada. Dr. Masliyah is the recipient of Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee medal and, in 2008, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada. On the international stage, in 2011, Dr. Masliyah became an Associate Foreign Fellow of the United States National Academy of Engineering.

Dr. Masliyah attributes his accomplishments to the excellent students and colleagues who have continuously challenged him along his entire career. Dr. Masliyah feels that he is blessed to have his wife Odette by his side, and his children Tamara, Ruth and Daniel who, on a daily basis, provided the atmosphere that allowed him to establish his career.

Harmon Ray

Professor W Harmon Ray achieved a level of research scholarship and industrial impact during his 37-year teaching and research career that is universally admired. Harmon has made significant contributions to the areas of polymer reactor engineering and modeling, feedback control and state estimation, and particle technology. It is the first topic, sometimes in combination with the other two, that we are celebrating at this symposium for the “Pioneers of Polymer Reaction Engineering”. His research combined experimental investigations with first-principle modeling of many types of polymerization, including condensation, emulsion, radical, controlled-radical, and catalyzed olefin chemistries. In many cases, new mathematical strategies had to be developed and applied to capture the complex dynamic behavior of multiphase reactor systems. The research was disseminated widely through The University of Wisconsin Polymerization Reaction Engineering Laboratory (UWPREL) research consortium founded by Harmon in 1983, as well as captured in models contained in the POLYRED software package developed under his leadership. More than 30 companies were members during UWPREL’s 20-year history, and the membership reads like the who’s who of industrial polymer manufacturers.

Harmon has received numerous international and national awards and named professorships during his career, including election into the National Academy of Engineering in 1991, the 1969 Donald P. Eckman Award and 1989 AACC Education Award from the American Automatic Control Council, the 1982 Professional Progress Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and the Vilas Research Professorship, the most prestigious named professorship at the University of Wisconsin. He initiated an exchange program which brought more than 100 German students to participate in the University of Wisconsin graduate program starting in 1979. In 2000, Harmon received the Richard E. Bellman Award, the lifetime achievement award of the American Automatic Control Council, and in 2006 he received the prestigious Gerhard Damköhler Gold Medal from the German Assoication of Chemical and Process Engineering. Harmon has also received honorary doctorates from the University of Minnesota (2001) and from the University of Waterloo (2003). Most importantly, he has strongly influenced the next generation of researchers with his professional integrity and high standards.

Sirish Shah

Sirish L Shah has been with the University of Alberta since 1978, where he held the NSERC-­‐Matrikon-­‐Suncor-­‐iCORE Senior Industrial Research Chair in Computer Process Control from 2000 to 2012. He is the recipient of the Albright & Wilson Americas Award of the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering (CSChE) in recognition of distinguished contributions to chemical engineering in 1989, the Killam Professor in 2003 and the D.G. Fisher Award of the CSChE for significant contributions in the field of systems and control, the ASTECH award in 2011 and the 2015-­IEEE Transition to Practice award. He has held visiting appointments at Oxford University and Balliol College as a SERC fellow, Kumamoto University (Japan) as a senior research fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), the University of Newcastle, Australia, IIT-­‐Madras India and the National University of Singapore. The main area of his current research is process and performance monitoring, analysis and rationalization of alarm systems. He has co-­authored three books, the first titled, "Performance Assessment of Control Loops: Theory and Applications", a second titled "Diagnosis of Process Nonlinearities and Valve Stiction: Data Driven Approaches”, and a more recent monograph on “Capturing connectivity and causality in complex industrial processes”. He is a fellow of the Canadian academy of engineers.

Honouree: Honourary Symposium in Recognition of Sirish Shah for Outstanding Contributions in Systems and Control

Sieghard E. Wanke

Sieghard Wanke studied chemical engineering at the University of Alberta (BSc and MSc) and the University of California at Davis (PhD). He worked for two years for Celanese in Canada and the USA before joining the Dept. of Chemical Engineering at the University of Alberta in 1970 as an assistant professor. He spent one year as a visiting scientist at the Frist Haber Institute in Berlin on a Max Planck Gesellschaft Fellowship; he was a catalysis consultant for the United Nations Industrial Development Agency (1978-1987) with projects in South America, Asia and Europe. He had long term joint research projects with universities in Poland and Thailand. He was the department chair for 14 years during the 1985 to 2002 period and retired from the UofA in 2008. His research area was catalytic reaction engineering; specific areas of research in which he has made contributions include stability and regenerability of supported noble metal catalyst, metal-support interactions, characterization of supported catalysts, modelling of oscillatory and chaotic catalytic reaction systems, catalytic upgrading of bitumen and heavy oil, catalytic olefin polymerization and polyethylene characterization. He has published about 75 refereed papers, has edited several conference proceedings and holds 3 patents dealing with novel catalysts. In 2003, he received the Frank Spragins Technical Award from the APEGA for his contributions in the areas of catalysis and reaction engineering. His involvement with professional and technical organizations included serving as Program Chairman for two CSChE National Conferences, and serving on various CCPE (currently Engineers Canada) and NSERC committees. Currently, he is enjoying his retirement.